"Sancte Michael Archangele,
"defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam
"Et insidias diabloi esto praesidium!"
Translation?
"Holy Archangel Michael,
"Defend us in battle;
"Against evil
"And against this insidious defense of demons!"
("...insidious..." is definitely wrong. Maybe "insidias" qualifies "diabloi," not "praesidium.")
Note: My grammar here is all wrong. See the combox.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The account I read of the origins of this prayer is that it was composed by Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903) after he saw or "heard" a vision of God and Satan debating the fate of the Church. Satan demanded that he be given unfettered power to attack the Church, which God allowed, up to a certain point, such as not being able to coerce the free wills of human beings.
As for the translation of the Latin text of the prayer, the prayer card I have says: "Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil." Your knowledge of Latin is better than mine, is that a superior translation?
Sean
Sean,
But I got the translation all wrong. "Esto" means "this," in Spanish, not Latin. In Latin, it means "let him be." Thus: "let him be defense against 'nequitiam et insidias diaboli." I am sure that the prayer card you have is right.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I think I understand. In context the prayer means "Let him be our protection, etc." And Pope Leo's prayer to St. Michael is a favorite of mine.
Sean
Sean,
That's it. Latin is one hell of a language to translate. Word endings matter a lot and I could see already that my attempted translation did not fit the endings as given. Because of the endings, the word order can be more flexible.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Interesting, what you said about Latin. It made me wonder how a Roman of the time Augustus or Tiberius would try to translate English into Latin if he stole a time cycle from the Time Patrol and ended up in our era.
Sean
Sean,
I think his main problem would just be coining new words for things that did not exist back then.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Good point. And Medieval and "Modern" Latin does have words for things and concepts unknown to Augustan Rome. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT was even translated into Latin!
Sean
Paul:
I wondered about your translation, because the illustration you posted contradicts it.
Kaor, DAVID!
Well, Paul did say he was only ATTEMPTING to translate the St. Michael Prayer. Also, he said attention need to be paid to the word endings in Latin.
Sean
David,
Yes. I struggled with the Latin while illustrating the post with an image accompanied by a prayer without initially realizing that that was the same prayer! But, in any case, I still had the task of trying to make sense of the Latin for myself.
Paul.
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